In Which He Does Not Want
by Indy the Wonderful
Summary: A door, a slightly less ass-holey Edward, and a whole new set of rules. Twilight, where Alice sees Bella coming, and tells Edward to Get His Shit Together. Where Vampires are ugly as their souls when they walk in the sun. Where Charlie's late nights and long hours lead to a friendship of opposites. Where Bella and Edward fall in love, without that first mess-up.


If Bella had been in Phoenix, she'd be paced the halls. Pacing like she meant it too—scuffing her toes on the hard tile floors and wishing she could walk back out the school doors undetected. There were lots of locks though, keypads and heavy metal doors that only lead down a series of halls back into the front office. Metal detectors. A security guard or two, thoroughly out of place in the relatively cushy neighbourhood. Not that there weren't fights in Phoenix Central. But there were no fights here, there was nothing here. It seemed to her that the green simply stretched forever into the world, surrounded by the heavy grey skies and dotted with black raincoats and houses alike. She thought they must look alike, from above. Genderless black raincoats and houses with slate roofs, so wet they didn't even grow green moss.

She missed the sun.

Perhaps moreso than that, she missed the feeling of the sun on her back, dragging highlights out of her dark hair like rays of gold in a sea of deep mahogany

In her truck, rumbling down the road, she felt as far from the sunny haven of Arizona as she'd ever felt. The tallest house around was three stories, if you generously counted the attic. She only hoped that her feet were carrying her into the correct building, because the school looked like an amalgamation of early 20th century houses in a museum. It looked like that, the only difference being that, despite being early for school, there was already limited space in the parking lot.

Her truck stuck out like a big, rusty, thumb. All the teachers drove reasonable little cars, Toyotas and Hondas, with all-wheel drive and carefully cleaned windshields and headlights. The students drove mostly mini-vans and trucks. None quite as old as hers. They all had either chains on their tires or dents.

The lot was mostly empty of students, she observed, people seemed to congregate closer to the buildings. That was what the school was made up of, maybe just under a dozen brick buildings in a loose grouping. The snow had mostly been cleared, snaking little paths of stone and ice melt that ran between buildings and small cleared circles where people chattered in groups. From above, it probably looked like drunken crop circles cut into snow by some lost alien.

She felt like a lost alien

Nonetheless, she toddled her way across the ice. It was in that moment Bella realized she wasn't meant for carrying stylish shoulder bags—all it'd done for her was tip her further off balance and sent her grasping for the hoods of cars to stead herself. But, all in all, she made it to class and that was one hell of an accomplishment for her.

She'd gathered some papers from the "office building" as they called it, and she clutched them in nervous hands. It felt like a lifeline. Her mittens were on the table in Charlie's house, and she wished for them, to hide the nervous jittering of her fingers. Actually, when she looked harder at the blue tint to her hands, it might've been cold making them shake.

Bella _hated_ the cold.

She hated the papers she was holding. She hated lots of things.

Had she been less consumed by her hatred of things, she might've looked up before being pounced upon by the boy behind her.

"Hi!" Cried a voice, and Bella startled, dropping half of her papers on the floor. She imagined they made a 'whoosh' noise as they fell. "You're Isabella Swan, right?" The boy was Asian, with dark hair that fell over his forehead and excessive acne. He smiled, and she added another adjective: over-eager.

The papers had scattered all over the linoleum floor. _Damnit_! She stooped to gather them, but they were already soaked in ice melt and dingy snow-water. They ended up in a nearby bin, which the boy doggedly followed her to.

"Sooo.." He began, eyes crinkled with a barely contained smirk. "you're Isabella, right? Chief's daughter?"

"Um, just Bella." She brushed a chunk of hair up behind her ear. It fell immediately.

"I couldn't help but notice you looked lost—" was it the map topping her pile of papers, or was it the look of hopelessness in her eyes that gave it away? "—and I'm Eric, your unofficial tour guide."

Eric. Great. "Unofficial?" She questioned.

He flipped the fringe that brushed his forehead, and smiled even wider. "Newspaper duty. You're front page news!"

Her heart gave a small palpitation. "Oh, no, no." She rushed to explain, tripping over her words, "I'm not really, uh, news. Please."

Instantly he raised his arms, losing the smirking edge to his grin. It was now soft, and _slightly_ comforting. "Hey, hey, don't worry about it!" he pulled out a black phone and typed rapidly for a second across the dimmed screen. It was a wonder he could see it at all. "No feature. Done, nada, never even happened!"

Bella let out a small puff of air. She could see the vapour, warm in the icy air.

"Well, paper or no paper, I have to show you the school! Welcome to Forks High, the finest collection of school buildings in the Olympic Peninsula. What do you have first?"

"Building four?" There was a big '4' next to her listing for Precalc.

"Me too! Wow, that's convenient. Walk with me?" He talked so fast she didn't notice that she was walking until she was tripping, chasing after him as words spilled from his mouth like water. "Precalc is super hard, but don't let it get you down. I think everybody who goes through this school fails it once, you know. Just part of the school life here, like, you gotta fail one class in the math department…" After that, she shut her dazed mind off to his talking. Also, hearing "fail" on her first day here didn't exactly make her want to listen.

They walked into the building, and he held the door open; catching it with the edge of his hands so she could walk through behind him. They went up a flight of stairs and down a hall, and when they reached a blue door with a large window he marched through, once again holding the door for her to enter behind. She smiled at him, but he had twisted around to greet someone in the class—and that was the mistake. Eric's fingers slipped from the edge of the door, the moment she paused to look in.

Sometimes, time slowed down when she was about to be met with some new horrible bruise. Not very often, because not every bump could be special, but when the collision was bound to be painful, the world slowed so she had time to dread the impact. Like now; she could see the mechanism above the door pulling it closed, she could see Eric's clammy fingers sliding one-by-one off the door edge. She could feel herself tense, and her eyes clench shut. There was a faint breeze behind her, cold and close to her back.

Wow, time really had slowed down. Shouldn't her nose have been mushed by now?

Maybe this hit would be the one to finally disfigure her. It'd be kinda lame, to have fallen down stairs and out of cars (been hit by cars, but only lightly) and fall to a damn door. Charlie'd be mad. She'd have to call her mother. If she wasn't frozen, she'd tap her foot impatiently—might as well get it over with. On her first day, and she was already getting involved in collisions with doors.

But the collision… didn't come?

Bella hesitantly opened one eye, then blinked. The door window was not even two inches from her face. A strong looking arm, pale as snow, was pressed to the glass, just to the left of her face.

Bella froze. That was no cold breeze she'd felt, and she was suddenly _very_ aware of the cold, tall person behind her—so close they were almost touching. A cool breath blew across the top of her head. It was like the first hint of snow in November.

She sensed the person shift behind her, and there was a moment before the words, spoken almost hesitantly, brushed her ear. "Be careful, Isabella."

She whirled around at that, and there he was, leaning above her, hand still firmly planted on the window. He was so tall. The kind of tall that she had to crane her neck to see, until he tilted his head towards to. Hair fell to cover his forehead, and caught the fluorescent light. His hair was… like sunlight flashing on a bronze sculpture. If a hunk of bronze had perfectly mused bedhead, the kind that no amount of fussing could ever fake. It was a little long, a little curly, and a lot attractive. The face matched her statue theory, only made of marble. Every feature seemed chiselled from stone and made directly to cut into the softest parts of her heart; the high cheek bones, the full and rosy lips, the long black lashes that nearly brushed his heavy dark brows, creased in the centre of his forehead. She wanted to smooth that crease, reach up and rub it away with her thumb. But his skin, the impossibly beautiful and white skin, looked like marble. Even the slight suggestion of blue veins seemed merely lines in the silky stone of his being. And his eyes—oh god, those eyes. Gold. Golden, like two shining coins in the brightest eyes she'd ever seen.

Oh.

So this was what love at first sight felt like.

Dimly, her inner voice of reason chimed that she should ask the stranger his name. Instead, she watched a single curl, just a wisp of his tumble of bronze, slide into his forehead. He huffed a breath and tossed his head.

The moment broke.

"Watch the door." He said, voice soft. Not deep, yet low. Clear inflection.

Bella sighed. "Oh, yeah." Then, afraid to move too much, she reached up and pushed an errant chunk of brown hair behind her ear. Her eyes closed for the briefest of moments, and she gathered her mind together from the millions of fragments his brilliant eyes had shattered it to. When the pieces did come back together, they seemed all the brighter for having been broken by his beauty. "Thanks, for, um, the door."

The corners of his mouth lifted. She remembered to breathe, but only with sincere effort on her part. "No trouble, Isabella."

"Bella."

"My apologies."

The bell sounded, and she heard someone huff angrily. Breaking away from the glory of his face, she spared a moment for the window, where Eric looked at her. Irritably.

"I'll let you get to class," he smirked. "Bella."

His arm withdrew from over her head slowly, and she missed its presence before it even moved. She didn't move when he moved, instead she watched his form retreat down the hall. He was tall and a little lanky—but the way he moved, tall and purposefully, made him seem all the more different from the shuffling, hunched masses. Dressed in a button up, the softest shade of green, like the colour of a slightly scuffed emerald. A centre stone on a wedding ring, worn from decades of loving use. The dark trousers lovingly caressed his slender but defined legs. Warm brown lace up shoes, and a black backpack. He disappeared around the corner, taking her heart with him.

Bella sighed, and sank back into the door. Only she leaned too far back, and tipped through. The thud hit her before the pain did and—oh, there it was. It shuddered up her back and her palms stung from their harsh slap to the tile.

The floor and her were destined to meet, it seemed. Even as she sat up and rubbed her abused tailbone, she was glad that she hadn't fallen when that handsome stranger was here. A bruised butt was worse than a bruised ego, in her opinion. (They often went hand-in-hand.) When she looked up, Eric was helpfully holding the door now, staring at her with raised eyebrows and an open mouth.

"Thanks for holding the door, Eric." A blond called from the back of the classroom, snickering.

Eric's already ruddy face flamed at the words. He began to stutter out an apology.

"Don't worry about it," Bella said, shrugging her shoulders. "at least I didn't hit my face." Face. Thinking about her face made her think of high cheekbones and haunting honey coloured irises. She picked herself off the floor gingerly, noting idly the blue and grey tiles. Eric didn't offer her a hand up.

"Yeah, Eric—don't worry about, Cullen's got it!" Yelled the same blond from before. He hopped his seat on the desk of a brunette with heavy foundation, and strolled over. "Mike Newton." He smiled warmly, dimpling his face. He was youthful, like a broad-shouldered cherub. Someone from elementary school that never quite outgrew the face. Eric's cheery demeanour soured rapidly. He'd smiled when she walked behind him, shocked when she escaped her brush with the door, upset when she fell and _Cullen_ was mentioned, and lastly outright bitter, when Mike introduced himself. Was it her? The girl with the heavy foundation looked upset that she'd lost Mike to her.

"Bella." She nodded. He looked at her for a moment, a furrow between his brows but the same grin on his face. She shuffled her feet a little, trudging to the far side of the room, where she spied an empty desk. He watched her the whole way there—she knew, because she darted glances at him as she picked her way between the desks.

The teacher walked to the front of the room and began to speak, ignoring her and her newness completely. Bella thought she felt gold eyes on her every time she turned around, but it was only her mind. He'd walked off anyway. It didn't stop her subconscious, that useless reasoning of hers.

It was a great day, so far.


End file.
